I always get really excited when one of my favorite baking recipes from Dallas works here in Denver without any high-altitude modifications. Today’s recipe – Flourless Peanut-Chocolate Cookies from the March 2005 issue of Everyday Food – is one of those recipes. I loved these cookies so much when we were in Dallas and got so many compliments on them… I’m just thrilled I can share them here as well.

And let me tell you something, folks: These cookies are not only delicious, they’re ridiculously easy. Like, you-don’t-even-need-a-mixer easy. Here’s how I made them.

In a large bowl, I stirred together 1 cup of creamy peanut butter, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1 large egg (lightly beaten), 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of table salt until well combined. Next, I stirred in 3/4 cup of semisweet chocolate chips and 1/2 cup of roasted salted peanuts.

From here, I deviated a bit. The recipe says to use moistened hands to roll heaping tablespoons of dough into balls. I used my 1 1/2-inch cookie scoop for the first batch (with the dough leveled instead of heaping) and my hands for the second batch so I could see which method gave me the best cookie shape. (The scoop won by a mile!) The recipe also said to bake all the cookies at once with one rack in the top third of the oven and one in the bottom third. I feel like I get more consistent results when I bake my cookies in the middle of the oven, so I decided to do separate batches. With that said, I placed the dough balls about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. (I ended up with 21 cookies.) I baked each batch at 350°F until they were golden and puffed (13 minutes in my oven). I cooled them on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Oh, heavens. They were just as I had remembered, except maybe ever so slightly less puffed than they were in Dallas. No matter… The Queen of Portion Control (me, as often as I can stand it) has already eaten two of these and it isn’t even 5 p.m. yet.

The cookies are very peanut butter-y, and I love the chunky texture created by the whole peanuts in the dough. They aren’t soft and chewy but they certainly aren’t crisp either… They’re somewhere in between. They’re a little bit crumbly like a good shortbread, which is another thing I can hardly resist.

So anyway, if you like peanuts and chocolate, make these! You’ll enjoy them. And my fellow high-altitude bakers can rest easy knowing this won’t be yet another batch of cookies that spread into sad, crispy discs.